Shedding the Mask
by cherry valence
Summary: Tommy and Thea run into each other at a party, and neither one is quite what the other is expecting. [Pre-series]


Shedding the Mask

. . .

Summary: Tommy and Thea run into each other at a party, and neither one is quite what the other is expecting. [Pre-series]

Note: Pre-2.07, but…nope, still can't go there.

. . .

The party at Club Pure was two parts freely flowing liquor, and one part burning regret. Thea felt the whole package, certain that the club's theme had become her new tagline before she stumbled into Tommy Merlyn and his date, and spilled her drink everywhere.

 _Because this stupid night wasn't bad enough already!_

After stumbling and dropping the crystal flute of champagne, she'd thought that she'd truly reached the pinnacle of how terrible this stupid night could get. But much like life, it had only seen fit to prove to her that it could always get worse.

And of all the guys in Starling City, as she stumbled on the floor it had to be Tommy Merlyn who caught her, all steady hands and crinkled eyes, his mouth parted in concern as he realized...

Her. Him. There. They were both here.

It reminded her enough of Ollie to hurt. Not because he had been Oliver's best friend, and practically a second annoying big brother...but because he left. She hadn't seen him in three months, and now this. Thea was torn between shame and anger and pain.

"Thea," Tommy righted her, still resting his hands on her arms and she couldn't hardly pretend not to feel the warm tingle of his hands on her.

It was just... _Tommy_. She'd missed him too, and she was angry at him for leaving too. At least Tommy she could lash out at. _Him_ she could punish.

 _Because he came back. He kept coming back._

"Thea, what happened?" He tilted her head up with his hand, and looked into her eyes. "You're drunk. And...what- _what_ are you on?"

"I just…" Thea swallowed over the lump in her throat, trying to pull away from Tommy; she hated the way he looked at her now, like the little lost girl who needed his pity. She couldn't handle that. She was already getting it from everyone else. "Just let me go."

"Come on, Tommy."

Out of the corner of her eye, Thea noticed now the tall, leggy model resting her hand on Tommy's back. For a moment, she felt a spark of jealousy. This woman didn't even know him, and she'd never have him either. She was just one more in a long line. French, Italian, Brazilian…he worked his way through all of them.

She was just one more item on a to-do list.

Thea knew him, she really knew Tommy. She was just one more cheap wannabe. Maybe she'd make it to breakfast...maybe. Tommy had dated dozens of her, and she'd seen them pass in and out of his life as easily as could be.

Still, she felt it bubble in the pit of her stomach because _it was just so unfair._ She loved him. But she was never going to have him, she was never going to have anyone.

She'd always loved him, and he'd always never noticed. She was just Oliver's little sister; a little annoying, sort of a pest—but even when Oliver tried to nudge her out of the way, Tommy was still nice to her.

Tommy had always been nice to her.

"Let's go. The driver is here." The model drawled through a heavy accent that Thea couldn't place as her head pounded uncomfortably.

Once again, she'd had too much to drink. Or maybe it was the pills that Nate had given her. She just felt sort of sick. _Don't you dare vomit in front of him_ , she ordered herself.

"No. Just…" Tommy shook his head, looking and sounded frustrated as he waved his date off. "Give me a second."

His tone was sharp with her, and Thea laughed, or through she did as she decided to make it easy for all of them and just go.

Thea pulled free from his grip, and stumbled a little bit. She wasn't going to be some problem that he had to deal with. She tripped though, and was surprised when Tommy's hands cupped around her waist and steadied her before she could fall.

"Come on," Tommy said, in a gentle voice as he held her close to his side. "Thea, I'll—"

" _Tommy_." The woman pouted, interjecting loudly. "You said we could go."

"Alexandra, just _go_." Tommy told her, waving her off as he tried to push Thea into an empty chair even while she shoved him away belligerently.

"Al _ess_ andra." She snapped in reply, sounding angry. "I won't wait for you."

"Uh huh." Tommy said, pulling off Thea's mask and nodding his head as he studied her eyes.

 _Like he could even criticize her_ , Thea thought. _How many times did he get in trouble for clubbing a little too hard? Hadn't he spent most of his life being bailed out of trouble by his dad, with her brother right at his side?_

Thea adjusted the cat ears on her head, and glanced down to make sure the corset hadn't shifted. It wasn't perfect, but she looked good.

Not that he would notice.

At least she wasn't in the sort of trouble he'd been in. She'd never been arrested, and she was just having a good time like everyone else.

She had everything under control.

...

Thea's eyes were cloudy, and unfocused. She had obviously had too much to drink, and she was on something. He didn't know what, though.

It worried him, and for good reason. He'd seen what happened to girls like Thea when they consumed too much of these club drugs. She was way too young, and this wasn't…

Tommy bit down on his tongue as he pushed away the thought. _This girl wasn't Thea_. She was lost, and she was a mess.

She tried to fight him off, pushing his hands away clumsily. Thea had to be kidding if she thought he would give up that easily, he hadn't been around lately—but he didn't love her any less. With the sting of guilt, he realized he should have been paying more attention to her, talked to her more when he'd been gone—came back and seen her when he first saw the covers of those tabloids.

"Just leave me alone!" Thea objected, trying to get up from the chair, but unable to wrest away from Tommy's firm grip on her shoulders.

Tommy pushed her back into the chair again gently, while he tried to figure out what to do, and Alessandra began arguing with him again— _because, was it not clear that he had bigger problems to deal with than her disdain for this party?_

"What are you doing with this silly little girl? We have reservations!" Alessandra said, pulling the mask from her face and throwing it down on the table angrily.

"Then take them." Tommy said, ignoring her with a roll of his eyes. _What was he doing with these girls?_ "Thea, _what_ —"

"Tommy!" Alessandra grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward her. "You can't treat me like this. I have options."

Tommy looked back to Thea, she looked like she was going to be sick. He was torn, trying to decide what to do; what was best for her. Should he be taking her to the hospital or getting her home? One thing he knew for sure, he wasn't leaving her here on her own. Thea could hate him all she wanted, but it wasn't happening.

"Don't you dare move a muscle." Tommy warned her, feeling worried about the entire situation. It was the most responsibility he'd felt in three years, the closest he'd felt to a grown up since Oliver died. "You are going to tell me what you're on and who gave it to you."

Better than anyone, he understood how she was hurting, and how easy it was to numb that sort of pain with the party and drugs that swirled overhead. Their names came at a premium, and the drugs fueled it all.

He grabbed the wrist of the Victoria's Secret model— _what was her name again?_ —and pulled her slightly out of hearing range from Thea but close enough to keep an eye on her.

"You better make a choice." Alessandra told him, grabbing his arm and turning him to face her. "Me or the girl. I'm not waiting around all night for you. That isn't how this works."

She crossed her arms over her scantily clad chest and watched him, apparently waiting to hear that she came first.

Tommy smiled slightly, and shook his head.

What was he doing with her? He was exhausted of waking up in the morning and wondering why he was wasting his time with these women that he didn't even like very much.

He'd give her first. He was sure he was the first one to be telling her no thanks. These models were a dime a dozen, but Thea was… _Thea_. She came ahead of all of them. He wasn't really sure how it happened, but she was special to him.

 _It was Thea_. He just…

She and Oliver…they were his family. _Had_. Tommy corrected himself slowly, still struggling with it sometimes. Sometimes it was impossible to really believe that Oliver was gone forever.

"You're an awful human being, you know that?" Tommy released her, dropping his hands to his side. "Just go. Take the driver and the reservations, okay? Have a great night."

"You have to be joking." Alessandra was aghast as she looked him up and down.

 _Not today_... Tommy thought, with a wry shake of his head, it had been awhile, but he'd forgotten what a girl leaving in a fury looked like.

Something like that.

He turned back around to get Thea and get her out of here, but she was gone.

"Damn it," Tommy swore, looking around the crowded club for her in every direction.

 _What, because you hadn't pictured the booze swilling, drugs doing, teenage girl giving you the slip? Did you forget sixteen already?_

 _. . ._

Pure was packed tonight for the Ted Kord's annual charity costume party. Tommy had only ended up here by sheer happenstance, being that his up and coming supermodel date wanted to be sure that she'd be guaranteed a place in the Starling Reporter, especially on his arm.

Well, at least she got what she wanted, Tommy thought with a tired sigh. The paparazzi caught them on the way in, and now she could go on her way knowing there would be a picture of them on the cover of the magazine.

The packed crowd and dim lighting made it impossible to find anyone. Never mind trying to find _one_ girl in a slinky black leather miniskirt and cat ears was like looking for a needle in a...well, stack of needles. Never before had he felt such an annoyance with the lack of originality in Halloween.

He couldn't throw a stick without hitting a slinky, black cat. And to even combine the word slinky and consider Thea…

Tommy shook his head, unable to think of how Oliver would have killed him, or anyone for thinking it. They could say a lot about his friend, but above all, Oliver had been a great brother.

 _Thea_...

Tommy sighed as he circled the club, trying to find her. He'd heard that she'd been running slightly...off the tracks lately.

 _Well, of course she was_ , he thought. _Who coped well with losing someone they cared about?_

It was even worse when a camera was aching to catch your every move. Sometimes it seemed like the only person they were more interested in catching in trouble than him was her.

He _should_ have checked in with her more often, Oliver would have wanted him too. After he got expelled from Princeton it seemed like a good time to escape from this world and troll Europe where he wasn't nearly as exciting. The sheer anonymity of Europe had been a relief after the mess he had made of his life in Starling City.

 _Cat, cat, rabbit..._

 _Well, how about that?_ He thought sardonically, rolling his eyes as he pushed through the crowd. _Wasn't a little bit of diversity always nice?_

He groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face. For a high, wasted sixteen year old she moved fast.

Tommy turned in the crowd, trying to search her out, and when he decided to crash the DJ's booth and find her by sheer force of will he bumped into another rabbit and nearly knocked her over.

"Hey! Walk much..." She exclaimed at first, her voice trailing off as she looked up at him.

"Oh, sorry—" Tommy stopped abruptly as he really looked at the rabbit, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise. _Not a rabbit._

 _God, not by a long shot._

"Laurel, what are you doing here?" Tommy was aghast at the site of her familiar face. She looked...incredible. He tried to shake the thought away, it was a one-time thing. _It was just a one-time thing._ "I thought you were..."

"Away at school," Laurel finished, nodding her head, with the white ears bouncing on her head. "I'm home for the weekend...visiting my father. He's still here."

Tommy could hardly think of the words. Twelve some years of friendship and he couldn't muster up the words. Neither could she apparently. He was too aware of the fact that Detective Lance was still in Staring City, he'd had a court date to prove it too until his father had made that go away.

Good old dad, never there when he needed him, but always willing to show up and stop him from turning into a PR nightmare. If anything, he was sure his father was still upset he'd returned from Europe where any damage he did had a rather minimal effect against the Merlyn name.

"I..." Tommy shook his head, feeling a buzzed haze clearing up in his head.

He was pretty sure he'd burned through the glass of champagne from the limo. Probably he should try it out more often.

"Are you okay?" Laurel asked him, tilting her head slightly. "You look... "

 _Thea_! He remembered in a flash, as he looked past Laurel and caught a glimpse of the cat he was on the prowl for in the back corner near the stage with a small crowd.

"Excuse me," Tommy said, looking back to her apologetically, before brushing his hand down his front as he slipped away. "I just have to…"

As much as he would like to try and…god, say something, anything to Laurel—his priority was Thea.

Tommy steeled himself as he crossed the room to where she stood, pushing past two boys and a girl to get to Thea, and put this night behind them both.

. . .

She'd chalked it up to Merlyn being on the prowl for his flavor of the week when he surprised her entirely.

 _That's the thing about Tommy Merlyn_ , Laurel thought, pulling the ears from her head as she watched him walk away from her. _He was always surprising her, and she was always underestimating him_.

She didn't know why. But as he walked away, she brushed off her friends, and let her glance follow him. As Tommy left, she followed him because…

Because she didn't come to Club Pure for the mojitos, she knew with a sigh. Her father would be furious if he knew. She told him she was going out with a couple of her old girlfriends. It was more or less true.

She'd been hoping to see Tommy. On a regular night in Starling City, he was bound to be wherever the biggest party was. She made a million and one promises when she came home to see her dad, and every last one of them had been that she wasn't even going to think about him, or anything even remotely connected to _him_. Everything that had passed between them, after Oliver and Sarah…

It made her feel guilty—her! And this just made her angrier. She was the last person in the world who should have had to feel an ounce of guilt. She didn't do anything wrong!

But she had, and she did…and sometimes it felt crippling. Like all this anger, and hurt would consume her. It would have been easier if that was all she felt though, but as soon as she saw Tommy again, she knew that wasn't all that she was feeling.

Because her sister had died, and Oliver was dead, and Tommy slid into the pew next to her and when his arm brushed against hers she felt for a moment that everything could be okay.

Laurel shook off the thought. It had been three years since the funerals, and she was on her way to becoming a damn good lawyer, and Tommy…well, she thought he'd just picked up where he left off.

Tommy was breaking up the crowd that Thea had been in, grabbing one of the boys by the collar and shoving him against the wall, after pulling her from the crowd.

 _Tommy Merlyn_ , she shook away a smile as she thought. She'd always thought there was a white knight in there.

They had started talking and they hadn't finished, Laurel told herself, this was the only reason she was going after him. It was…was…

Laurel's mind trailed off as she got closer to the group, and was surprised to see that the girl he pulled from the crowd was an incredibly drunk Thea Queen. Laurel grabbed the girl as she wavered, barely able to stand on her own two feet. She felt a pang of hurt for a moment as she was reminded of Sarah.

Thea was only sixteen years old. What was she doing?

Laurel felt like she should have a question for this by now. She'd seen so many people go to this place where the only cure for everything they felt was to numb the pain with alcohol. She'd spent she didn't know how many nights trying to drag Sarah out of the party scene, covering for her with their parents, and now she was spending her nights carrying her father out of the bars.

It was never the life she imagined any of them wouldn't be living. In her mind, Thea was still a short kid with poofy hair that tried to squirm her way into everyone's business. She'd never forget…

No, Laurel told herself, biting down on the memory of Oliver. Even thinking about the good was hard, because it always turned to the bad before she could have a moment…

One mistake, and it had changed everything.

"Thea," Laurel looked down at the teen, keeping her hands near to make sure she didn't fall over or pass out as Tommy—

 _Fighting_? She cringed, as she watched him duck a punch.

Laurel supposed she couldn't be entirely surprised, he and Oliver had always been protective of Thea. A girl couldn't have asked for two better big brothers.

Thea wavered, and Laurel stayed close to her as she tried to figure out what to do. Thea wasn't just drunk, she was completely wasted. Sometimes she wondered if she should have covered for Sarah on nights like these—maybe for someone to get better, someone had to know.

She couldn't deny the temptation of drinking the pain away, but she was seeing what it was doing to her father and it wasn't going to fix anything. The alcohol only seemed to exacerbate the situation. She would never be that person.

"Thea, are you okay?" Laurel pushed her hair off of her face as it tumbled forward.

"My dead brother's ex-girlfriend?" Thea laughed, "Why would you even care?"

"Because..." Laurel's eyebrows wove together in concern as she wrapped her arm around Thea's waist and helped her to a nearby seat. "I do. We used to be friends."

"No, you and Oliver and Tommy were friends." Thea retorted, her words slurring. "I'm just...just Oliver Queen's sister...or I was. I'm not even that anymore."

"Of course you are," Laurel said softly, realizing she couldn't even say a single thing that she thought would make Thea feel better, because she still didn't know what to say to make herself, or her mother, or her father feel better.

Some days, she didn't know what to say to make herself feel better.

Maybe after you lost someone you loved there wasn't anything that could make things better; maybe all they had left was to take each day one at a time and hope to make it through in one piece.

. . .

It was unreal.

Thea's head pounded harshly after Tommy's hand closed around her wrist and yanked her away from Seth and Nathan and she felt the small packet of pills pressing into her skin after Seth slipped them into her pocket.

Whatever.

She struggled to regain her footing, feeling her head spin as she faintly heard Tommy yelling at the both of them over the loud music, shoving Seth up against the wall when the hands closed around her shoulders, and she realized that someone was talking to her. Trying to focus through the haze, she almost laughed.

It had to be an incredibly vivid, trippy dream. But it wasn't.

As she turned, Laurel started to talk again, and it just seemed so strange to hear her name coming from Laurel again. She remembered when she used to think that….think that Laurel was something to aspire to. She remembered wanting to be like her.

Then again, she'd thought a lot of things when she was thirteen. She thought that people were right and decent, and that things turned out okay as long as you were mostly good, and more than anything she knew that her dad and brother would always be there for her.

"Thea, are you okay?" Laurel asked.

If she had the choice to leave Starling, she'd have enough sense to stay gone, Thea decided. She'd never come back either.

Just like everyone else.

"My dead brother's ex-girlfriend?" Thea laughed, wondering if Laurel saw the irony in this.

Like she even cared. Just like everyone else in this town, she hated Oliver. That was her brother, the spoiled playboy who had gotten everything he deserved.

"Because," Laurel told her, wrapping an arm around her waist that Thea didn't fight because she was feeling dizzier than ever. "I do. We used to be friends."

As Laurel nudged her into a chair, Thea could hardly handle the injustice of that statement. Maybe that made her feel better, but they hadn't been friends. Laurel used to be nice to her, but they weren't friends.

Friends don't ignore you after your dead brother's funeral and not call for three years.

"No, you and Oliver and Tommy were friends." Thea retorted, feeling her words slur, and just wanting to get away now—she wanted to escape. "I'm just...just Oliver Queen's sister...or I was. I'm not even that anymore."

She was afraid to get up now as her head started to spin, knowing that there would be no help from Laurel. Tommy would cover for her, but Laurel would probably call a doctor and then her mother. Thea was vaguely aware of Laurel saying something else to her, and rubbed her hands over her temples. Now she was just ready to go home.

Her head felt like it was in sort of a haze, and she was sure that she had zoned out for a minute until she heard Tommy's voice sharp in her ear, his hands on her face.

Tommy's hands were warm. Everyone else seemed to have cold hands, but never Tommy. She almost giggled, because it felt nice.

"We're going. Now. You're on something." Tommy said, glancing back at Laurel with a question in his eyes and she took it as her time to go.

She wasn't sitting around to watch him fawn over Laurel.

"Get—get off of me." Thea stumbled, losing her footing in the tricky Manalo Blahniks and still trying to push away from him, as he didn't let her escape, wrapping his arm around her waist and trying to pull her off of the floor. "I said let me go!"

From the corner of her eye, she realized Laurel was still standing there, watching her and Tommy with this look of….like she was someone who needed pity. She didn't need anyone's pity!

"Not in this lifetime." Tommy said quietly, a frown creasing his face as he glanced around the club, and tightened his grip on her. "Thea, what are you doing? Where are you going?"

"Don't you get it?" She exclaimed, giving up when she couldn't fight his grip on her. "Nowhere! None of us are going anywhere, Tommy!"

She thought that if anyone might have realized that by now, it was him. They had nothing ahead of them except for their names, and some silly life that they were supposed to lead.

. . .

This night seemed filled with painful ironies.

For once, there seemed to be no cameras following his move, and as long as he was carting around his best friend's half-in-the-bag baby sister, it was for the best. He just wanted to get her out of here, and safely home before she got in any trouble.

 _Any more trouble_ , Tommy amended.

Laurel followed along, her cellphone out as she offered to call—call for a doctor, the police…

Tommy highly doubted that the police were going to fix this.

"Should I call someone?" she asked.

"Maybe you should mind your own business." Thea spat at her angrily, her words still slurring. "I don't need you or your help Laurel."

The both of them were already drowning in trouble, Tommy could see that now.

And if her words were any indication, he wasn't worried nearly enough.

"Tommy," Laurel said in a low voice, staying close to Tommy as he pulled her along. "She's obviously on something. She should be in a hospital."

"I'll call a doctor." Tommy said a whisper of a response to her, "If all that money isn't good for that, what it is good for?"

He could see by the frown on Laurel's face that she disagreed, but she didn't say anything else, following in a silence that Thea quickly filled.

"I'm having fun." Thea spat out, nearly tripping as Tommy pulled her along toward the private exit. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"What are you on?" Tommy asked her, pressing her up against a wall and taking her face between his hands and looking into her eyes. He'd never seen her like this before. "What is it, Thea? Did someone give you a pill, was it a powder…what are you taking?"

When she looked at him petulantly, he looked the outfit over and realized there was a pocket on the skirt. He lowered his hand from her face and slipped his fingers into the pocket and plucked away the packet of blue pills, tossing them behind him to Laurel.

Thea hardly seemed to care, laughing it off.

"Like I can't afford to buy more?"

"Are you crazy?" Tommy asked her, "Thea, these could get you killed! Why are you doing this?"

"Life." Thea laughed, "I'm taking a wild dose of life. You should try it sometime, I mean…it's sort of the only game in town."

"Thea!" Tommy shook her shoulders, seeing the looks that some stray stragglers gave as they passed by. "That's it. The party's over for you, I'm taking you home."

"No." Thea shoved back at him hard as he tried to pull her toward the door. "I'm here with my friends. It's a party. I'm having a good time."

"Yeah, I can tell." Tommy grabbed her, getting a tighter grip on her this time. "You're sixteen! You have all the time in your life to party, and not like this. You're better than this."

"Just let me go, Tommy." Thea struggled to break his grip on her, "This isn't any of your business. I'm not a little girl anymore!"

"No, I'm not." Tommy told her, pulling her along. "You might not be a little girl anymore, but you're not making very smart decisions right now, so just let me get you home before you end up in trouble, okay?"

Thea snorted, "Whatever. You're a big, fat hypocrite."

"You've got to start making better decisions, Thea." Tommy told her as he walked her out of the club, and to his car. "You're only hurting yourself."

"I don't need a big brother." Thea pushed him away again as he tried to drape his jacket over her shoulders. "I had one, and he's dead."

The icy tone cut through him like a knife. It had been three years, and it still hurt like it was yesterday. Thea wasn't the only one who lost her brother. Oliver was—had been—his brother and his best friend in life. He hurt too.

"I miss him too." Tommy said simply, closing the door behind her before hurrying over to the driver's side of the car.

It was quiet at first when he slid into the car.

"Well, it's really great that you miss him," Thea said coldly, "But don't think for a minute that you understand how I feel. I'm all alone, I didn't just lose Oliver and my dad, but my whole family. My mom is still a mess, she barely has it together—she probably hasn't even realized yet that I haven't been home in two days."

No, Tommy thought looking away from her, and squeezing his eyes shut as he felt the familiar sensation of tears burning behind his eyes. He couldn't imagine how she felt at all, he'd only lived it twice. He'd lost two families.

His own, his life had been decimated when his mom died. He'd only been eight, but he still remembered that heart aching sensation he'd felt when someone told him—

She's not coming home anymore.

And then his dad stopped coming home too.

Never had he fathomed that he'd feel that sort of loss again. He'd never feel as miserable and alone as when his mom had died, and took his family with her.

Tommy turned the key in the ignition, and glanced her way. Thea wasn't wrong, she'd grown up—sad, lonely, and desperate for attention…this was not the bright eyed girl who used to chase after him and Oliver trying to play with them, who would start crying when they sent her away.

"Go ahead," Thea laughed with an embittered edge. "It's not like she's going to punish me anyways. She'd have to come out of her bedroom for that."

"I'm not taking you home." Tommy said, pulling out onto the street, and toward his apartment.

"Where?" Thea asked, then sighed, "God, don't make this into some stupid lesson thing. It's not a big deal. So, I partied a little…everyone does."

"You're going to sober up, and then we're going to have a talk." Tommy told her.

"Oh, wow that's rich." Thea said, "Now, _now_ you want to talk?"

Tommy cringed, feeling a wave of guilt pass over him. He knew what she was referencing to. Thea had called him for two weeks after the funeral, and he'd never returned those calls after he father had bailed him out again after one more drunken bar fight.

"Don't you think…" Thea told him, "That maybe you're a day late and a dollar short."

God, he didn't know, but he really hoped not.

There was so much in his life that he couldn't fix, but if he was going to do one, decent thing in his life he wanted to help her—he'd like Oliver to be able to know that even though he was gone, he…

He just wanted to fix something.

. . .

"I mean…we're rich, and beautiful…" Thea had some sort of sense of her words slurring together, and a vague sense that she should be embarrassed. "Young…"

She sighed, resting her head against Tommy's chest as he carried her from the car.

"We should be happy. I should be happy."

Tommy was the last one to disagree. There had been a time, after the funeral where he thought life would go on, he thought that things would be better, now though, he realized that things were never going to be normal for anyone ever again. That accident had changed all their lives, and he didn't know if things could be right for any of them again.

. . .


End file.
